Tea party protesters jeer Marco Rubio, CBO

A large gathering of tea party supporters met outside of Capitol on Wednesday to express their frustrations over immigration legislation moving forward in Congress — including boos for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other lawmakers working on the bill.

“Marco Rubio has not read his own bill!” said Robert Rector, a senior researcher for the Heritage Foundation.

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“This bill is at its core amnesty,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who organized the event, told the sympathetic crowd. “We’re here to today… to take this debate outside the halls of Congress. If it’s not going to be good enough inside, we’ll take it outside!”

The gathering was a hybrid of a press conference and a town hall, and attendees were welcome to approach a microphone in front of the speakers’ podium to ask questions of the speakers and address the crowd. They also criticized Tuesday’s Congressional Budget Office report saying immigration reform would help cut the deficit.

“These are the same people that told you Obamacare wasn’t going to cost you anything,” Rector said. “You can always count on Washington to keep a promise, can’t you?”